LinkedIn Tip: Personalize Your Professional Headline (Just Like These People Did!)

August 3, 2011 / in LinkedIn, Social Media / by Mic Johnson

Every single time I have a 1×1 LinkedIn profile training session, one piece of advice I give is to personalize the professional headline of your LinkedIn profile. Some people don’t take my advice, but more and more I’m finding people that are open to being creative and letting the LinkedIn world know a little bit more about themselves.

Here’s mine:

What was my thought process behind personalizing my professional headline? In short, I didn’t want to be like 95% of the people out there on LinkedIn that list “CEO”, or “Project Manager”, or “Accountant”, or “Sales Manager”, or the other various titles that most people will gloss over when they are reading a profile. I want people to know there is a lot more to me than just being a Social Media & Business Coach at Blue Gurus.

Anyone and everyone that knows me knows that I LOVE the Kansas Jayhawks. I am a die-hard KU Basketball fan and get to my fair share of football games too. Additionally, people that know me well know that I lost my dad to cancer 15 years ago and that I am a volunteer for a wonderful organization called Cancer Action in Kansas City.  So all of the things in my professional headline are things I am passionate about and I want to share that with every person that sees my LinkedIn profile. 

What you will find, and this has played out with me personally and with some of the people I highlight below, is that even doing something as simple as personalizing your professional headline opens up conversations that would have never happened otherwise. For Greg King below, when he personalized his professional headline, five of his LinkedIn connections made comments about how much they liked the change and one even told him that he was an aspiring guitarist too! When Jenn Shorrock listed that she was a U2 fan, it sparked a conversation with a client.

People want to do business with HUMAN BEINGS and are interested (whether you think they are or not) in what you do and who you are when you aren’t at work. Simply customizing your professional headline help humanize your LinkedIn profile.

Take a look at what a few of our clients have done below and then get to personalizing YOUR professional headline!